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SONYA SPARKLED, WHITE AND pale blue diamonds fixed to her arms so that every gesture shattered light. The resulting thousands of coruscating rainbows cut through the crowds in the glass entry room of the opera house.
“Anyone familiar with the history of the city would have said the same,” Sonya said to a rapt audience of social aspirants. They hung on her words, hoping and praying that something heard here would allow them to ascend to the upper echelons of popularity.
Malcolm hung back, half hidden by the deep blue curtains framing the area reserved for the Lethes and their guests.
Framing was the perfect word. From a distance Sonya must have glittered, a jewel on display for the elite to see. Her glacier-blue silk dress was less an example of the textile arts and more a paean to the heroic efforts of glue. Watery, waving scraps were affixed to her body with gem-laced flesh peeking in between. Her pale hair was swept up in an elegant chignon, her makeup was restrained, artfully youthful. The end result was too calculated to incite passion and too contrived to garner compliments.
His role as an accessory was not something Malcolm wanted to dwell on, so he returned to watching the crowd below. The blue Lethe dye was a close-held secret within the family, kept exclusively for them, but this was Kytan, and blues and greens of all shades were on display.
As the sun crept to its zenith, the glass dome of the foyer danced with muted color.
The opera itself was unimportant. It was an excuse to see and be seen. A chance to network, form alliances, and strike at enemies in a socially acceptable way. Watching the crowd, Malcolm picked out relationships without knowing who they were or what they meant to Sonya’s plans. She would have enjoyed his ignorance, if he’d let it show.
There was no one alone in the opera house. They moved in groups of two or three, if they were younger or poorer. In groups of seven or eleven, or even seventeen for the large entourages, tailing like comets after the wealthy.
A parasitic network of mutual adulation.
“Doctor Long.” Sonya’s cold hand wrapped around his wrist. “Come say hello to my guests.” An order, not a request.
He put on a gracious smile as he bowed politely to the sycophants.
“Malcolm is one of the premier flight engineers on the continent,” Sonya told her audience. “He has quite a stunning mind.”
“Long, you say?” A man who looked barely old enough to shave frowned in puzzlement. “Not from one of the families then, are you?”
“My mother is an Amherst, of the Northland Amhersts,” Malcolm said coldly. It was important to reinforce his status now, and the family name mattered more than his accomplishments.
Sonya beamed in delight as people realized who she’d captured.
“The lost heir?” one of the girls asked, eyeing him like a forbidden treat. “Oh, Sonya. That’s so delightful! Whatever has Vherkam said about this?”
“Ollie?” Sonya shrugged, light rippling off her skin. “Somehow we’ve missed each other today. I’m certain he’ll be delighted. He did say he wanted what was best for me, and the Amhersts control some very nice farmland.”
More than the Vherkams, her smug tone implied. Although farmlands was a bit of a stretch. The Amherst name did come with a few hundred acres of farmland, but the majority of their holdings were in a stretch of barren tundra near the northernmost sea.
Malcolm studied his shiny blue shoes and the hem of his black-blue pants. He was a shadow of Sonya Lethe’s pale moonlight. A ghost.
Someone waved to Sonya from the entrance to her private balcony, and she released Malcolm to drift back to the railing.
Bells rang high noon.
The heavy, silver doors of opera house opened and a goddess walked in.
Probably not a goddess, but she made Malcolm’s breath catch all the same.
Dark brown skin with gold flakes intricately laced across her arms and back, a simple gown of fiery, coral orange, a crown of brown curls accented by more gold. She was the sun. The center of the universe. A bright fire on a cold, midwinter day.
Malcolm couldn’t take his eyes off her any more than he could will his heart to stop beating. How many years had it been? Over four since he saw her last. Not the woman on the floor, but the woman he’d loved and lost. They couldn’t be the same.
He wanted them to be the same.
He wanted her to look up, a radiant smile on her face as she recognized him.
He wanted to change the past.
“Ugh.” Sonya stepped up beside him and looked down at the golden woman in disgust. “Marshall.”
Malcolm swallowed back his first response, locking his memories away behind layers of icy politeness. “A Marshall or The Marshall?”
“Hermione Marshall,” Sonya said. “The only Marshall that matters. Heiress, ambassador, traitor, pick a title. I thought she’d have the good sense to stay away today. Look at her, the poor, sad thing. She’s alone.”
People were orbiting her; there was no better word. The crowd moved in response to Marshall, ebbing and flowing around her as she crossed the foyer.
“Look at the art she’s wearing,” Sonya said, glaring at the golden lace. “She must have spent all day in a chair. What a waste.”
The pattern of the gold lines on Marshal’s skin intrigued him nearly as much as the woman Sonya so violently hated. There was a mathemacality to it. A fluidity. The gold design was a fractal, a complex code unreadable to all but a few brilliant minds.
His evaluation of the situation, and the woman, shifted. She was insulting most of the crowd simply by being smarter than them, and none of them realized it. Someone would though. Eventually. The gossip pages loved ferreting out things like this. In a few days, everyone would be fuming.
“Hermione!” Sonya called out, her voice echoing across the dome. She waved to her rival.
Golden Hermione, skirts moving like living flame around her legs, looked up. “Sonya, I was hoping you’d be here.”
“Come say hello,” Sonya invited in front of the crowd. Making Hermione come to her put Marshall in a weaker political position.
But Marshall didn’t look like she was playing the game by Descent rules. She swept up the staircase, scattering the crowd and drawing attention. Like a fire, she sucked all the oxygen out of the room.
Up close, she could have been the grown version of the girl he’d fallen in love with as a teen. Their eyes were the same color of polished brown stone. Their faces had the same high cheekbones and full lips.
He watched for any indication she knew him.
White fire crossed her eyes as she smiled.
Spacer.
Sonya had been right, this wasn’t any average Hermione Marshall. This was the one who had gone to war and returned with a fleet of battleships.
He stepped back, trying to blend into the curtains.
Sonya would understand why a man from the islands the spacers had attacked didn’t want to speak to one, if she thought to notice him at all.
“You look so... chilly,” Hermione said in greeting.
“You look like you forgot which season it is,” Sonya said. “Orange? With gold knots?”
Marshall smiled. “My own design. Do you like it?”
“It’s still winter.”
“Only here,” Hermione countered. “I know you don’t travel much anymore. Not since that nasty business on the third continent. Accused of attacking a civilian and stealing Jhandarmi data?” Marshall clicked her tongue in a tsk. “Did they ever catch the woman who impersonated you?”
Sonya, put on the defensive, crossed her arms. “Within weeks of the event. I have trouble believing you didn’t know that. Everyone else did.”
“Everyone else had little else to occupy their time.”
There were gasps from the onlookers and Malcolm assumed the implication that everyone else had so little business to attend to that they’d been waiting for gossip was a grave insult.
Things were done differently on Descent.
Sonya unfolded her arms and smiled. “Understandable. At the time I was so busy prepping for my next project I barely had time for the investigators.”
“Is this the Kydellian project? I heard you were there recently.”
“Did you?” Sonya asked in mock shock. “Oh, that’s right. You know Silar and that Jhandarmi woman.”
Marshall’s smile tightened. “Jhandarmi woman?”
“Yes, the one who was so helpful after the explosion. I wondered if she reported to you.”
“Sonya, I know you love your conspiracy theories, but the Jhandarmi don’t report to me. Can we hope you haven’t done anything rash?”
“I would never act rashly, or crassly. I’m a Lethe, not a Marshall.” Sonya’s smile said she thought she’d won this round. “I simply removed an unwanted impediment between me and my goal. Have you ever dallied with red-heads? I hear they can be quite passionate.”
Marshall laughed loud enough to draw curious looks from the sycophants who were working hard to go unnoticed while the two society queens battled with words. “You want Silar? Hollis Silar? Well...” She shook her head. “It’s a choice I suppose. Not a good choice, perhaps, but then, so few of your choices are.” The last was with a pointed look to the would-be entourage. “With all your potential, Sonya, one would think you’d at least make the effort to step up. We’re not children any more. And people aren’t dolls for you to collect on your dusty shelves.”
“Would you like more than this gentle diversion? Then you’ll appreciate my new acquisition.”
“A new acquisition?” Marshall asked sweetly. “I look forward to the announcement. It must be a very delicate deal indeed if it’s taken this long for even a rumor to circulate. The whole continent will be waiting for the news.” Careful, flattering words spun around a vicious cut.
Sonya’s smile tightened. “And you? It’s sad to see you all alone.”
For a second Marshall’s brown eyes flicked in Malcolm’s direction. Half a heartbeat, and her attention was back to Sonya. “There’s someone waiting for me.”
“He couldn’t come today?”
“He had other arrangements.”
“What a shame.” Sonya reached out for him. “Doctor Long and I would have enjoyed meeting him.” Sonya caught Malcolm’s hand as he stepped forward at her command. “It’s so tragic, darling. Hermione has been single for years now.”
Malcolm looked at the golden woman, drinking in the sight of her. “Criminal,” he said since Sonya expected a response. “And a testament to the fact that so few people can withstand the intensity of powerful women. I find it quite alluring.”
Sonya preened, although his words weren’t for her.
“Power is its own motive force.” Marshall’s smile was filled with understanding.
“We should go,” Sonya said. “I’d invite you to join us in our box, but we already have guests.”
Marshall stared at him for a second longer than politeness required. “Don’t worry about me.”
Malcolm’s heart didn’t stop racing until Sonya pulled him into the cold dark of the balcony. The stage was set with fake cherry trees in full bloom and a glittering moon hanging low as the backdrop.
“I can’t stand that woman,” Sonya said with a sigh as she dropped into her seat. “Absolutely infuriating.” She pulled a small work computer from her bag with the open information light blinking green.
“You brought that?” He sat beside her.
“Naturally. The opera is the traditional ballad. I memorized it by the time I was seven.”
He closed his eyes, recalibrating to Com Channel Sonya. “The network you’re accessing is public. Someone could access your files.” The very carefully forged files Sonya had insisted couldn’t simply be sent over regular channels and had to be hand delivered.
“No one else brought work,” Sonya said with a little laugh as she took the datstick he’d brought and plugged it into the computer. “They wouldn’t dare.”
“Marshall is an augmented spacer. She has a tech implant in her body,” he said, spelling out the danger for Sonya. “She could have ripped your data while you were sniping at each other.”
Sonya stilled in alarm, then shook her head. “Wouldn’t matter. Everything’s encrypted.” Her screen showed several faces including Hollis Silar, Rose Lauren, and another black-haired woman who looked painfully familiar.
“What are those for?”
“Business,” Sonya said. “Sometimes hostile takeovers have causalities.” A light blinked next to the black-haired woman’s face. Sonya smiled as she sighed in relief. “One less spy to deal with.”
His teeth ground together as the lights fell. It was past time for Sonya Lethe to fail.
What were the rules for passing confidential information at the opera? Was he supposed to ask an usher to take the encryption code to Sonya’s rival or simply flag Marshall down during intermission?
Malcolm watched as the woman of gold and fire took her seat several balconies over. The gold on her arm was an encryption too. Her own design, she’d said.
Lethe’s standard encryption wouldn’t take Marshall more than a few minutes to break.
Hermione looked at him. In the dim light of the theater, he saw a white glow; the swirl of galaxies formed and died, leaving nothing but darkness. Lethe needed to fail and Marshall was going to make it happen.
“How much do you think Bennu would trade for on the open market?” Sonya asked.
“What?” He was jolted out of his reverie at the mention of his company’s name. “Why?”
“I need an acquisition,” Sonya said. “My other plan fell through, something Marshall knows very well. But she kept it quiet. She’s letting me recover.”
An unsound tactic if he’d ever heard of one. “Why would she do that?”
“Because, for all her many strengths, Marshall has the business acumen of a rotten apple. She doesn’t think in strategy or tactics.”
“I heard she was a general during a war...”
Sonya waved a hand and the scant light from the stage made the gems glow. “The spacers had a tiff. It wasn’t a real war.”
“Thousands of people died.”
“Three people died, and only islanders at that.”
“The spacers—”
“Don’t count. They aren’t the Chosen Children of the Empire. Mal Baular excepted.” Sonya shook her head. “Marshall oversaw a fist fight, nothing more. The spacers lost their focus, they forgot why they exist. When the emperor returns, I’ll see to it that he reminds them.” Her smile turned cruel. “Then we’ll see how Marshall fares.”
Malcolm sucked in a breath and let it go. “I must have misunderstood the situation.”
Sonya patted his knee. “It’s all right, dear. Not everyone can have the intelligence I have.”
The urge to retort with the observation that rocks had more intelligence than she did seemed ill-considered. He let it go. “Bennu is not for sale.”
“It will be. Money buys everything.”
He’d sooner jump off the hypertram over the city than let Bennu wind up in Lethe’s hands. Perhaps that information could be passed on to the sympathetic ears of Miss Marshall.
Then, if Lethe and Marshall wanted to square off for a match, he could watch the war veteran smear Sonya Lethe across the battlefield from somewhere safe. Preferably somewhere on a different continent.
Whatever Sonya said, Marshall was not to be underestimated.
Ever.